Let’s get this show on the road!
I feel like I spent less time than usual on my team this year, not because I lacked the time or the motivation but because the overall strategy felt so obvious and there were so many must-picks. As I stated upthread, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if all 33 of my guys are on at least 10 teams. In a different year, I could easily have seen myself going for the textbook low-risk low-reward pick in Laporte or for a big early haul and then hoping they can stay on their bike for once in Plapp or Vine. In reality, I didn’t even consider them, because the expected value north of 1000 points was simply higher and I was perfectly happy throwing more cheap options in there. I mean, we all know which two riders I’m talking about, so let’s cut to the chase.
Jonas Vingegaard (1760) - I was never that deterministic about Vingegaard’s supposed dominance at the Tour, and similarly I’m not that deterministic about Pogacar’s. But even if he can’t match Pogacar, they won’t meet in the first half of the season and so he should be winning basically every race he starts in the meantime. If he’s still the second-best GC rider, he should still have 2500 points in him, perhaps more if he does the Vuelta too, and if he isn’t then he can push for 3000 again.
Wout van Aert (1259) - him failing to crack 2000 points in 2023 was rightly seen as a disappointing season, and then this year he can rightly blame everything on bad luck. While getting back to the 2800 points he’s managed twice will be hard, there’s no reason to think he won’t crack 2000 at bare minimum.
Obviously that limited the space I had everywhere else that wasn’t in the budget segment. In the end, I had four candidates for two slots in the 500-700 range, three options for two spots in the 400-500 range, and ended up completely skipping everything from there to the lower 200s. I did look at Lutsenko and Tiller there, but I just wasn’t confident enough that they weren’t going to have another underwhelming season. I never wanted Hayter - Soudal have three faster guys, two of whom can climb reasonably well, it would make a lot of sense to use him as a luxury domestique for Evenepoel, and Moscon proved that the team isn’t a panacea for fallen big names.
Moving back to the options I did consider, the two more expensive riders I wound up cutting were Ganna and Simon Yates. The former will suffer from no Olympic TT on the one hand and an incredibly hilly Worlds TT on the other hand, and in addition I don’t trust Ineos. The latter is seemingly only doing Tirreno and Catalunya prior to the Giro, which just ups the risk and lowers the reward. Both of them still have great potential, but in the end I went for Trek here.
Thibau Nys (702) - that amount of points, in just 34 race days, for a puncheur who did a grand total of four one-day races of which one flat race and one where he crashed, is insane. Yes, he still won’t be doing the most extensive schedule, but he will be racing more, focusing much more on the classics, and then he’s likely yet to hit his peak on top of that. But really, you can also put it more simply - if arguably the pre-season favourite for a race like Flèche is this cheap, it’s hard not to pick him.
Giulio Ciccone (555) - a full season at a level that saw him crack 1000 points in 2023, then this year he wasn’t really any worse but basically only got half a season where he was healthy and consequently also only half the points. No reason to expect he can’t at least get close to the quadruple digits again.
The 400-point-plus pick I omitted was Penhoët. A young sprinter who started his season in May and does lots of juicy French races ticks a lot of boxes, but his schedule doesn’t look quite as appealing this year with his planned GT debut looming large. I will be shocked if he doesn’t turn a profit, but I think my two alternatives have higher ceilings.
Antonio Morgado (411) - absolutely ridiculous first showing in the classics for a second-year U23, then couldn’t get anything together after that. That does imply a bit of risk, but there is very clearly a quadruple digit rider there and he could potentially reach those scores this year already.
Paul Magnier (405) - I’m a massive believer in his talent. Last year, when he was one of very few good picks on my team, he did a bunch of U23 races in the middle of the season, then crashed out of about 100 points and the final 6 weeks of his season in Britain. Really, he was already quite a bit stronger than those 405 points suggest, so even if he doesn’t improve much he should turn a decent profit. And I very much do expect him to improve. Like with Morgado, 1000 points is not out of the question.
That left very little budget indeed for those other 27 riders, so I’ll skip past discussing who else I didn’t pick as those omissions are less likely to change things drastically for me. This part of my team was mainly about whittling things down to get within budget, slowly stripping away about 200 points over the course of a couple of evenings. Those were really the only decisions I was still thinking about in the final week or so before the deadline - like I said, the overall framework was much more set in stone than usual.
Søren Kragh Andersen (205) - started the classics season with fitness issues last year and just couldn’t get going. In addition, being part of Trek’s armada (seriously, Pedersen plus Milan plus Stuyven plus Skujins plus him is impressive) should be more favourable than being Van der Poel’s lieutenant. No more burying himself in the first two hours of Ronde…
Victor Lafay (182) - very much looked like a man who was past his injury issues at the end of last year. In addition, being on a flying Decathlon team makes his Cofidis score - which would already make him a good pick if he matched it - look beatable…
Cian Uijtdebroeks (176) - one of my big disasters in 2024. When it seemed as though his issues were iliac artery-related, I seriously considered leaving him out, but now that it turns out that isn’t the case the chances of him picking up where he left off in 2023 are pretty good.
Jørgen Nordhagen (165) - rule number one of 2020s CQ is that you should always blindly trust the most exciting U23s turning pro, especially when they’re still really young. He is perhaps the best exhibit for 2025.
Matthew Brennan (146) - rule number one, exhibit B. As I’ve said on the main board, he is capable of picking up his first WT win Down Under.
Tao Geoghegan Hart (137) - will never be the world’s safest pick, but at this price it’s lunacy to pass on him.
Felix Engelhardt (133) - 456 points in your neopro season, then lots of bad luck with illness and injury in your second season making you 70% cheaper? I can’t think of many scenarios where I’d skip a rider like that.
Steffen de Schuyteneer (125) - perhaps there’s a little bit of De Lie PTSD playing a role here, but he’s looked a huge talent since his junior days and seems very much ready for the pros. Schedule shouldn’t be a problem either…
Pablo Torres (122) - rule number one, exhibit C.
Niklas Behrens (115) - rule number one, exhibit D.
Lennard Kämna (108) - always a risk when someone’s been out for that long, but he’s bounced back so many times already.
Andrea Bagioli (106) - doesn’t really have as good of an excuse for a bad 2024 as most of the comparable options, but at this price I never considered skipping him.
Tibor del Grosso (95) - his CX season suggests a big step up compared to 12 months ago. If he can match that improvement on the road - and he’s showed the potential to do so - he will do really well.
Taco van der Hoorn (95) - really obvious pick and really easy rider to root for, what’s not to like?
Rémi Cavagna (80) - Van Wilder after leaving Sunweb aside, I can’t think of anyone else in the time I’ve played this game where the sole act of changing teams has given me as much confidence in picking a rider.
Andreas Kron (68) - of the myriad obvious cheap options, he might be the single most obvious one.
Léo Bisiaux (63) - not quite as confident in him being ready as I am in the neopros above, but that’s why he’s cheaper. His talent is beyond doubt, though, and the French calendar usually makes the step up a bit easier.
Milan Vader (52) - hoping for a Damien Howson 2023 kind of effect here. Doesn’t have the greatest excuse for an underwhelming 2024, but while he did some easier races he did those same races in 2023 without doing much in that year either, and the races he got his points from that year he either didn’t do or crashed out of. That was enough to sway me in the end.
Florian Vermeersch (51) - this is about the fifth pick on this list who feels like he should be the most popular pick for the season…
Thomas Gloag (46) - third year in a row picking him, will this finally be the time his - and my - bad luck runs out? Him and Tulett being the only climbers in Visma’s TDU lineup does make me more hopeful…
Florian Senechal (37) - another rider for whom nothing went right last year. If Arkéa survive into 2026, they will have to fight tooth and nail for points next year, if not, he himself will have to fight tooth and nail to earn a contract somewhere.
Dylan van Baarle (35) - it’s definitely possible that he’s simply finished, but I’m not ready to ignore someone who won Omloop two years ago, Roubaix three years ago and is still only 32 when he’s this cheap. If he still has the drive, it’s a contract year to boot…
Ben Tulett (27) - he might actually have had the worst luck in 2024 out of anyone on my team, which is saying something. Like with Gloag, I like his potential Down Under.
Geoffrey Bouchard (25) - it definitely isn’t a guarantee that you come back after a year of injury when you’re in your 30s, but he was making it through his stage races - including a Vuelta - pretty comfortably in his two months of racing at the end of the year which isn’t a terrible sign. Together with Vader, the pick I was the least certain about.
Élie Gesbert (10) - kind of a similar deal to Kämna where he needs to bounce back from major injury once again, just with a lower price and ceiling.
Albert Withen Philipsen (0)
Paul Seixas (0) - picking juniors skipping directly to the pros hasn’t always worked out well, but both of them have had not just one, but two years of looking ridiculously talented under their belt. Not expecting the kind of miracle debut season we’ve seen in the past from Tarling and especially Evenepoel, but somewhere between 200 and 300 points like Uijtdebroeks managed certainly wouldn’t be a shock.
The cheaper riders who I either wound up stripping out to get within budget or seriously considered putting in when performing said budget cuts are Sentjens (who would have been in for sure had he been turning pro), Isidore, Carthy, Goossens, Faure Prost and Louvel. Widar was kind of in the same boat as Sentjens, but I wasn’t as close to going for him.
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